What’s on your bookshelf?

November 17 2009 by linc in Books |No Comments


The Walking Dead

All work and no play makes Linc a dull boy, right? Well, I thought it was about time to touch on one or two things outside the linux/technical arena. One of these things is the “The Walking Dead” series. This is a comic series that I was introduced to by Dann Washko after he an the other guys from the TechShow finally convinced me to read the Graphic Novel “The Watchmen”, which, by the way, is also on my bookshelf.

I am a big horror movie fan from way, way back and have all the required George Romero movies nearby and handy on dvd. These comics, now bound in “graphic novel volumes” up through 10 right now, are a fantastic extension to my zombie movie collection. Not only that, but these graphic novels are really really good in their own right. The story is great, the character development is fantastic and the artwork is really top notch. If every graphic novel was as good as these, I would have a room full of them.

So, if you are a graphic novel/comic fan or even a horror/zombie fan, this is something you just have to get a hold of.

What’s on your bookshelf?

November 16 2009 by linc in Books, Linux, Ubuntu |No Comments


The Official Ubuntu Server Book

Ahh, these are the kinds of books I really dig. As a systems administrator, I love to get books that detail setting up servers and services and this is exactly what this covers for Ubuntu. Here you can learn about things from what bind is and how to get it working to kickstarting, raid and a plethora of other server topics. Great reference material here, especially for those people who are thinking they want to get a server set up at home. You just can’t go wrong with this one.

Pro Ubuntu Server Administration

If you were going to really really get into Ubuntu server administration you would want this book, probably to go along with the Official Ubuntu Server book. Like the title suggests, this book is intended for those people who are in up to their neck in serious admin tasks. This book covers things like getting Nagios running so you can monitor things better, server performance analysis, iSCSI, LDAP and even a smattering of VPN. It’s the stuff the big boys play with, and it’s a great reference and tool for those kind of tasks on Ubuntu servers. I try and make it a policy to pass a lot of my books along so they can also benefit other people, but this one stays put on my bookshelf. I am keeping it 🙂

What’s on your bookshelf?

November 15 2009 by linc in Books, Linux, Ubuntu |No Comments


The Official Ubuntu Book

For Ubuntu users, this one is a real gem. This is your “soup to nuts” type good starter book for Ubuntu users. It is great reference material for everything from the history and idea behind the Ubuntu distribution to more advanced topics like using Ubuntu as a server and even touches on different offshoots of Ubuntu like Kubuntu and Edubuntu. What will really make a difference to a newer Ubuntu user (or just a new Linux user) is the sections of this book which give detailed instructions on how to use different available pieces of software to accomplish tasks like getting your email going, drawing pictures with Gimp, finding your files and so fourth. There is also a great section of the book dealing with common issues and troubleshooting problems like fixing an incorrect screen resolution.

A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux

As great an Ubuntu book as the last one is for the desktop Ubuntu user, this one is that and more of it! Even though this book is for a little older version of Ubuntu, the information in it is absolutely expansive. If you cannot find a reference in here on how to get a certain task accomplished, I would really be surprised 🙂 This book goes through the general information like setup and install like most books do, and then gives you HUNDREDS of examples of how to get things done with your Ubuntu install. It’s really a pretty great book, and the one that I am going to pass on to a new Ubuntu user friend of mine.

What’s on your bookshelf?

November 14 2009 by linc in Books |No Comments


I mentioned that I was going to take this opportunity to explote my bookshelf a little bit since my *play* laptop’s screen bit it again. I figure I’ll call this the “What’s on your bookshelf” series. I’ll try and give some general reviews about what’s on my personal bookshelf and why and I’ll try and keep things relatively short because AI have quite a few books to go through and, well, I don’t want to bore either one of us 🙂

Building a monitoring infrastructure with Nagios

The first book that gets a mention is Building a monitoring infrastructure with Nagios. This is one of the books that I have that is really quite well worn. I do some Nagios administration at work and more recently at home. This book has been invaluable to not only me but several of my colleagues at work too.

Configuring Nagios is certainly not for the faint at heart and I have used Chapter 4’s Configuring Nagios information a LOT. Not to mention the command line options on Appendix C and the review of best practices. It’s been quite handy to have some direction right at my fingertips with some of this, and it’s didn’t hurt to have something to throw as a stress reliever on occasion too 🙂

Really, get this book if you are going to delve into Nagios – you’ll be happy that you did.

Getting things done – The art of stress-free productivity


This *LOOKS* like a fantastic book. It was recommended to me by a plethora of people, obviously one of those power self-help kind of books that everyone on the planet has read but me. I actually borrowed this from my boss some months ago and, just to prove how much I really need to read it, I have not yet had the time to do so.

I need to get this onto my short list of things to do, but I am curious as to what others actually do think of it. If you have read it, make sure to drop a comment and let me know the parts in there I really need to pay attention to!

Throw some Rocks at it!

November 13 2009 by linc in CentOS, Linux, RedHat, Science, System Administration, VMware, work |1 Comment

ganglia
One of the parts of my day job is dealing with and managing our HPC cluster. This is an 8 node Rocks cluster that was installed maybe a week after I started. Now I was a bit green still at that point and failed to get a better grasp on some things at the time, like how to maintain and upgrade the thing, and I have recently been paying for that 🙂

Apparently, the install we have doesn’t have a clear-cut way to do errata and bug fixes. It was an early version of the cluster software. Well, after some heated discussions with our Dell rep about this, I decided what I really needed to do was a bit of research to see what the deal really was and if I could get us upgraded to something a bit better and more current.

Along came my June 2009 issue of The Linux Journal which just happened to have a GREAT article in it about installing your very own Rocks Cluster (YAY!). Well, I hung on to that issue with the full intention of setting up a development/testing cluster when I had the chance. And that chance came just the other day.

Some of you probably don’t have a copy of the article, and I needed to do some things a bit different anyhow, so I am going to try and summarize here what I did to get my new dev cluster going.

Now what I needed is probably a little different that what most people will, so you will have to adjust things accordingly and I’ll try and mention the differences as I go along where I can. First off, I needed to run the cluster on RedHat proper and not CentOS, which is much easier to get going. I also am running my entire dev cluster virtually on an ESX box and most of you would be doing this with physical hardware.

To start things off I headed over to The Rocks CLuster website where I went to the download section and then to the page for Rocks 5.2 (Chimichanga) for Linux. At this point, those of you who do not need specifically RedHat should pick the appropriate version of the Jumbo DVD (either 32 or 64 bit). What I did was to grab the iso’s for the Kernel and Core Rolls. Those 2 cd images plus my dvd image for RHEL 5.4 are the equivalent to your one Jumbo DVD iso on the website that uses CentOS as the default Linux install.

Now at this point, you can follow the installation docs there (which are maybe *slightly* outdated(?), or just follow here as the install is pretty simple really. You will need a head node and one or more cluster nodes for your cluster. Your head node should have 2 interfaces and each cluster node 1 network interface. The idea here is that your head node will be the only node of your cluster that is directly accessible on your local area network and that head node will communicate on a separate private network with the cluster nodes. With 2 interfaces, plug your eth0 interface on all nodes, head and cluster into a separate switch and plug eth1 of your head node into your LAN. Turn on your head node and boot it up from the Jumbo DVD, or in the case of the RHEL people, from the Kernel cd.

The Rocks installer is really quite simple. Enter “build” at the welcome screen. Soon you will be at the configuration screen. There you will choose the “CD/DVD Based Rolls” selection where you can pick from your rolls and such. I chose everything except the Sun specific stuff (descriptions on which Rolls do what are in the download section). Since I was using RHEL instead of CentOS on the jumbo dvd, I had to push that “CD/DVD” button once per cd/dvd and select what I needed from each one.

Once the selections were made it asks you for information about the cluster. Only the FQDN and Cluster name are really necessary. After that you are given the chance to configure your public (lan) and private network settings, your root password, time zone and disk partitioning. My best advice here would be to go with default where possible although I did change my private network address settings and they worked perfectly. Letting the partitioner handle your disk partitioning is probably best too.

A quick note about disk space: If you are going to have a lot of disk space anywhere, it’s best on the head node as that space will be put in a partition that will be shared between compute nodes. Also, each node should have at least 30gb of hdd space to get the install done correctly. I tried with 16gb on one compute node and the install failed!

After all that (which really is not much at all), you just sit back and wait for your install to complete. After completion the install docs tell you to wait a few minutes for all the post install configs (behind the scenes I guess) to finish up before logging in.

Once you are at that point and logged into your head node, it is absolutely trivial to get a compute node running. First, from the command line on your head node, run “insert-ethers” and select “Compute”. Then, power on your compute node (do one at a time) and make sure it’s set to network boot (PXE). You will see the mac address and compute node name pop up on your insert-ethers screen and shortly thereafter your node will install itself from the head node, reboot and you’ll be rockin’ and rollin’!

Once your nodes are going, you can get to that shared drive space on /state/partition1. You can run commands on the hosts by doing “rocks run host uptime”, which would give you an uptime on all the hosts in the cluster. “rocks help” will help you out with more commands. You can ssh into any one of the nodes by simply doing “ssh compute-0-1” or whichever node you want.

Now the only problem I have encountered so far is I had an issue with a compute node that didn’t want to install correctly (probably because I was impatient). I tried reinstalling it and it and somehow got a new nodename from insert-ethers. In order to delete my bad info in the node database that insert-ethers maintains I needed to do a “rocks remove host compute-0-1” and then “rocks sync config” before I was able to make a new compute-0-1 node.

So now you and I have a functional cluster. What do you do with it? Well, you can do anything on there that requires the horsepower of multiple computers. Some things come to mind like graphics rendering and there are programs and instructions on the web on how to do those. I ran folding at home on mine. With a simple shell script I was able to setup and start folding at home on all my nodes. You could probably do most anything the same way. If any of you find something fantastic you like to run on your cluster, be sure to pass it along and let us know!

Curses!

November 12 2009 by linc in FreeLinuxBox, Hardware |No Comments

tpt23
Short post today. More of a memorial post than anything else I guess.

As if on queue, my thinkpad laptop has realized that I have been using it and has decided to make with the funny video problems once again.

This sort of puts a damper on my rolling distribution reviews as it was quite convenient for me to run them on that laptop and I really don’t have anything else that’s comparable.

Perhaps it’s time to switch tactics a little and do some book reviews? We shall see… In the mean time I think the T23 will end up on freelinuxbox.org, so keep watch there for this historic piece of computing equipment there.

CentOS 5.4 The Real Deal

November 11 2009 by linc in CentOS, Linux |No Comments

tpt23
I promised that I would try the full install version of CentOS 5.4 desktop on my thinkpad and didn’t want to disappoint, so here it is…

I actually had a really hard time with this one. That is not to say that I believe that there is an issue somehow with CentOS, but certainly something odd with the lappy at the very least. For some reason, no matter how hard I tried, I could not get the installer to run correctly on the dvd. Or more correctly put, on any of several dvds. The installer would just randomly crap out in different places. Finally I just tried an old CentOS 5.3 dvd in an external dvd player, and that finally did the trick. Besides, it only takes one quick “yum -y update” from there and you’re at 5.4 anyhow.

Like the live version (or should that be the other way around) the full install of CentOS 5.4 is quite good looking and very snappy. It uses the gnome desktop and has all the goodies you would expect from a full blown enterprise desktop. It also carries, smartly, the software that I personally use in a day to day basis – firefox, thunderbird, openoffice, etc.

You know, I almost dislike reviewing this particular distribution because there is nothing particularly exciting about it other than it does what I like for a business desktop distribution and does it quite well. The same goes for the server install, both available from the same dvd, you get a true, reliable enterprise class Linux that “just works” ™ like it’s supposed to. I guess, that is the exciting part. You get a good Linux without having to tweak and mess with a bunch of things.

This sure isn’t a *home* desktop Linux. There’s no easy support for multimedia, so I wouldn’t go springing this on mom and dad, but for a business desktop, you just can’t go wrong here. And just FYI, there are plenty of good instructions on how to get your media on within a quick google search.

As unexciting as this sounds, I am still going to get a more permanent desktop install of this somewhere in my house. Just like I run some servers at home on CentOS, it sure couldn’t hurt to have a really stable and quick workstation somewhere within easy reach too!

What I Carry

November 10 2009 by linc in Gear |2 Comments

whaticarry
What do you do when you work an hour away from home in an urban jungle? Well, you have to take what you need with you.

That is one of the first things I noticed when I started working in Phily. Almost everyone there is carrying some sort of backpack or big shoulder bag. In fact, many people carry 2 or three (really). It didn’t take long to figure out that when you are that far from home for that many hours a day, you sort of have to be like a backpacker in the wilderness and carry everything with you that you need.

I am always interested in what other people need to tote around with them to get by, so I thought I would share what I take with me most of the time. If you click on the picture, I will go from top to bottom, left to right…

The Bag: I bought a SOLO polyester expandable messenger bag. I used to carry around a Targus computer backpack, but it started to hurt my one shoulder so I opted for a messenger bag which rides across my body more. Although this bag holds all my gear and is pretty rugged, my preference would have been for a nice leather messenger bag. The price difference is what got me the SOLO as it was around $20 and the leather version I wanted was $150.

Computer: I carry an Acer Aspire One with me. This is the 9.1″ version with the 8gb solid state drive. I have Linux Mint 7 installed on it instead of the default Linpus Lite Linux which was a little too light on the Linux for me. I also had the ram upgraded to 1.5gb, added a 9 cell battery for 6+ hours of battery life, and added a 4gb ssd card for a little extra storage space. I have yet to find anyone who owns one of these laptops that doesn’t like them. Right next to it in the picture is it’s power cables.

Ethernet Cable: Hey, once in a while it’s nice to have a hard line to a network for speed and simplicity sake and it really doesn’t cost a lot of space or weight to make sure I have a cable handy.

Glasses case #1: Yup, for my daily wear pair. Along about the age of 38 my eyeballs decided they would just crap out and the Dr said I could start wearing “progressive Lenses”, which is Dr speak for “your eyes are now crap.” Anyhow, I used to have a normal prescription for eye strain that I never wore and now I have glasses I only wear when I want to see.

Pocket Knife: I carry a great little inexpensive pocket knife. It’s a Winchester ParFive that I bought for around $15 at K-Mart (I think). I use it for darn near anything and everything from cutting cables and opening boxes to poking holes in the film of my microwave lunches.

Cellphone #1: My home cell phone. I still have the junky one that I got from Verizon when I signed up 2 years ago. Yes, I am cheap 🙂 Hey, it still works fine!

Inhaler: Some yeas ago I had a couple bouts with asthmatic bronchitis. I literally could hardly breathe. That is the scariest dang thing in the world and I have carried an generic emergency inhaler around with me ever since.

Cellphone #2: This is the cell that work gave me. I like mine better so I just set that one to forward it’s calls to mine, turned it off and I threw it into my bag where is just rides around.

Tums: I drink too much caffeine and eat spicy foods and suffer the consequences.

Eye drops: Already went over how my eyes turned to crap right? Well, they get really dry too because I stare at monitors all day.

Deodorant: Did ya ever sit next to someone on the train that just stinks to high heaven? Well, I am not that guy. In fact, as a fat guy, I am kinda paranoid about smelling bad so I make sure that I don’t 🙂

Chapstick: Especially in the winter time my lips can get so dry that they hurt. A little tube of this stuff can go a long way.

Tissues: I am a guy and probably wipe my nose on my sleeve unconsciously but I carry tissues for any nose blowing I need to handle on the train.

Glasses case #2: It wasn’t too long ago that I finally got a pair of prescription sun glasses. It is so cool to be able to see while wearing your sunglasses. Everyone who wears glasses should get a pair!

Charging cable for Sansa Fuse: My Sansa Fuse uses some proprietary USB charging cable.

Work ID’s: Gotta have those to get my in work and datacenter, etc.

Train pass: $150+ a month, but it’s better than paying parking fees. Well, most of the time.

Wallet: Bet you carry one of those too!

Sansa Fuse: (above wallet) This is a fantastic audio player that is Linux compatible and also plays oggs!

Pens: Sharpie Pens. They write well on darn near anything and don’t bleed either!

Tide-to-go pen: What can I say, I am a slob. I cannot possibly eat anything with tomato sauce without getting it on my shirt. This stuff actually works to get it back out again!

USB Sticks: I carry 2 4gb usb sticks for all those files and Linux installs I need to do whenever I need them.

New Testament: Greatest book ever written right? I also carry the occasional Linux Journal, National Rifleman and Popular Science.

Glasses cleaners: Dirty glasses are the bane of my existence. Normally I run my glasses under hot watter and clean them off with a soft towel (bowling towels work great for this), but if I am in a bind, these will clean my spectacles enough to mostly not annoy me.

Last but not least is what isn’t pictured. I carry a lunchbag. I figure I eat breakfast and lunch at work for less than $3 a day if I carry it with me from home. If I don’t, it costs me at least $10 and many times more, for something not anywhere near as healthy (but many times more tasty).

That’s the norm for me. Now what do YOU carry?

Tools of the trade

November 9 2009 by linc in Gear, work |No Comments


Just what kinds of tools do you need to do a systems administrator job? I Am talking about actual hand-type tools, not fancy laptops, big brains or large amounts of your favorite caffeinated beverage and pizza. Surprisingly, I use very few.

The first thing I picked up is a little toolkit. I don’t think you need to spend a lot of cash on it, in fact, mine was less than $6, but it needs a few important pieces in it. The most important by far, probably, is a halfway decent screwdriver with at least a small selection of bits. The kit I bought (from Microcenter btw) has a regular screwdriver with extension and bit set and also has a small selection of the small jewelers screwdrivers. Although I hardly ever use jeweler screwdrivers, if your glasses happen to fall apart or something, they sure are handy to have around! The kit also includes a pair of tweezers which I have never touched, and two more quite important tools, a pair of side cutters and a pair of needle nose pliers. You’d be surprised how handy both of those are.


The other must-have is a pocket knife. Really. I cannot tell you how many times I reach for my pocket knife a day. I use it for everything from opening boxes and cutting strapping/cable ties/old wires to perforating the film on my lunch before I pop it in the microwave (yes, I wash it off first). Some guys carry around a Leatherman or a Swiss Army Knife with all kinds of screwdrivers and other things attached, but my preference is single task tools. They just seem more rugged, easier to use and better suited for daily use. To that end I picked a decent little inexpensive pocket knife, a Winchester Parfive, which was well under $20.

The only other tool I can think of that might enjoy wide use for some Systems Administrators is a good Ratcheting Telemaster cable crimper. While I don’t really use one of those at my current Sysadmin job, I used to use it almost daily at my old job. Do yourself a favor and make sure you buy a good quality tool here with a comfortable handle. After you squeeze on it a few hundred times you’ll understand why 🙂

Not the final authority on the subject, I am also interested to know what you might use yourself, and if you think I may have forgotten something. Just let me know by leaving a comment here or sending me an email in the usual manner.

Year of the Linux Desktop? Not!

November 8 2009 by linc in Linux |No Comments

20090307-mint
Let me preface this by saying that I use Linux almost exclusively as my desktop at home and at work (I have a mac too). My wife uses Linux exclusively as her desktop. Many of my friends and coworkers use Linux as their default desktop as well.

That being said, is 2009 the year of the Linux Desktop? No way, and 2010 isn’t going to be it either.

Now many people are going to say that Linux still has a way to go before it gets it’s “year of the desktop”. Opinions differ, but people point out things like hardware compatibility issues, lack of a unified desktop, ease of OS install, ease of program/utility install, windows program compatibility issues, and on and on.

What I would like to say is that none of that amounts to a hill of beans. The year of Linux on the desktop happened long ago when I was able to start using Linux full time instead of anything else. And not just I, but countless other users as well. You see, there might have been some issues along the way, things that got fixed or better as time went along, but all in all, I have been able to use Linux on my desktop and function not only in a home, but corporate environment just fine for almost 10 years.

Don’t get me wrong, things have certainly gotten easier lately. We now have distributions like Ubuntu which is practically brainless to install and looks and runs fantastic. This was not the case way back when, but I was still able to get the job done. Then again, I can remember a lot of things in other more popular operating systems that ran rather badly back then too 🙂

We have great utilities now with installers that are light years ahead of other OSes. We have almost fully Microsoft compatible office suites (or in some peoples opinions better). We have the whole gamut of media players, productivity utilities, and yes, even games, many of them really fantastic! Having so many “cloud” utilities is helping even more.

I think Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols hit the nail on the head when he wrote it’s not the year of the desktop because we’ve already had it. Most people just didn’t notice.

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